Would Brian Cashman rather run a small market team?

Over the weekend, Bill Madden of the Daily News wrote a column about the Brian Cashman/Rafael Soriano press conference. The premise: Brian Cashman is chafing at what it means to be the general manager of the New York Yankees:

If you listen to some of things Cashman has said over the years and look at the pattern with which he has chosen to operate in the last few years - the CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Mark Teixeira winter notwithstanding - a picture emerges of a GM who clearly wishes he was running a small-market team like his pal Billy Beane in Oakland. Indeed, you get the feeling that Cashman is tired of being labled a “checkbook GM”, while viewing that $200 million Yankee payroll as an albatross rather than a built-in insurance policy for making the postseason every year.

I suppose there are any number of ways to read this -- Brien at IIATMS, where I saw the column linked, has a pretty robust takedown of it all here -- but I tend to revert to Occam’s Razor whenever possible.

A simpler explanation than Cashman wanting to prove his brains to the world by running a team with a relative handicap is that Cashman would simply prefer to run the Yankees without being overruled by anyone and that he got a bit miffed when he wasn’t allowed to. Doesn’t mean he wants to leave. Doesn’t mean he wants to prove himself by turning the Pirates into a winner or something. Like all of us, he just wants to do the job he currently has in a manner that makes him happy.

Cashman’s reaction to the Soriano business is a human one, and unless we hear of more palace intrigue from Yankeeland, I’m inclined to believe that this is simply a matter of a guy venting a bit as opposed to some crisis of confidence like the one Madden describes.